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Saturday, April 13, 2013

Murder At Nickajack Gap?

Map Courtesy of Fold3
Click to enlarge

On April 21, 1864, Lieutenant Horace C. Scovill, of Ogle
County, Illinois, took command of a small force of pickets belonging to the
92nd Illinois Mounted Infantry.Newly
arrived at Ringgold, Georgia, the 92nd was armed with Spencer repeaters, having
fought at Chickamauga in Wilder’s Brigade. Scovill, of K Company, had just been approved
for promotion to captain. Thirty years
old and single, he would one day hold political office in Rockford, Illinois,
including mayor and town clerk.Yet all
his subsequent experiences, to the day he died, would be shaped by a few tragic
and horrifying hours in the hills of northern Georgia at a place called Nickajack Gap.

Just over the
Tennessee state line from Chattanooga, Taylor’s Ridge runs north-south in
Catoosa County, Georgia. About five miles
southeast of Ringgold is Tunnel Hill, where Confederate General Joseph Wheeler’s
Cavalry Corps was headquartered.Eight
miles south and slightly to the west, lies Nickajack Gap, scene of much hard
fighting in the spring of 1864.Connecting Ringgold, Tunnel Hill and Dalton, the Western & Atlantic
Railroad was the key to Atlanta, 151 miles into the heart of Georgia.Sherman’s army group would have to dislodge
the Army of Tennessee from its fortified positions at Dalton and then supply
itself by the railroad, or any attempt to capture Atlanta would fail.One mission of the cavalry of both sides was
to watch the strategic mountain passes, known locally as gaps, giving their
army commanders vital intelligence on enemy movements.Lieutenant Scovill had the unenviable task of
picketing Nickajack Gap, highly vulnerable due to its relative distance from
Ringgold and close proximity to Tunnel Hill.

Scovill’s force
numbered sixty-three men, which he posted in squad-sized units, their horses
available if needed. Fewer than half a
dozen were mounted as videttes, patrolling between the picket posts, whose strength
varied from seven to twelve men. The
largest group was the eighteen-man reserve squad, which bedded down at Lyle’s
farm in the low ground west of the ridge.Scovill would remain with the reserve so that he could dispatch support
to any section of the line that might come under Confederate attack. These deadly attacks were initiated by both
sides, one having taken place on the 20th at Spring Place, a few
miles east of Dalton.Union forces had
surprised Confederate pickets there, capturing roughly thirty Tennesseans, as
well as killing their lieutenant.

Such fights had
been going on since February, barely meriting a few lines in newspaper columns
and official reports.Rarely ever
involving more than a company or two on either side, nonetheless, this type of
fighting brought in valuable horses, equipment, and most of all, prisoners.Captured men would be hustled off to
headquarters, where they would be interrogated for military intelligence before
being sent off to prison camps.Many
would die in the camps from starvation, disease and exposure, or simply be shot
by trigger-happy guards.

Quite new to this sort of fighting, the 92nd
Illinois had only acquired mounts in the summer of 1863, allowing them to
transfer to Wilder’s “Lightning Brigade,” eventually arming themselves with
Spencers. Yet when they arrived at
Ringgold, they were told by General Washington Elliott, commander of the Union
Cavalry Corps, that they would not receive fresh mounts. In fact, Elliott wanted to dismount and rearm
them with Burnside carbines and pistols. Resistance from the officers of the regiment
had prevented any of that from happening, still, the official word on the 92nd
was that they were

thoroughly demoralized.Running courier lines in Alabama, as well as a miserable, rain-soaked,
mud-slogging trek over the mountains to Ringgold, had taken their toll.

The Illinois troopers also found the command
structure of the cavalry in constant flux, with regimental commanders sometimes
heading up brigades or even divisions. Colonel
Eli H. Murray of the 3rd Kentucky wore all three hats until the
arrival of General Judson Kilpatrick from the Army of the Potomac. Kilpatrick relieved Murray of command of the
3rd Division on April the 17th.Murray would eventually command the new brigade to which the 92nd
had been assigned, relieving Col. Robert Minty, who had been in temporary
command for less than two weeks.

At first,
Kilpatrick seemed inclined to go ahead with the plan to replace the Spencer
rifles that the Illinois troopers had become so attached to.However, he agreed to give them a chance to
prove themselves and their repeaters before making any final decision.Meanwhile, the order for the 92nd
to picket Nickajack Gap came down.Knowing
how dangerous the assignment was, Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin F. Sheets
protested it in writing.When the order
stood, Sheets turned in his resignation, effective April 23rd, the
day all hell broke loose.

Scovill, a
transplanted New Yorker and former school teacher, would not have known all the
men he led out on the 21st. Since
they were drawn from every company of the regiment, effective command over them
would be dubious in such an exposed position.A vivid eyewitness account shows just how tenuous Scovill’s command and
control was.Without that account,
piecing together what happened would be next to impossible.

In his diary, Corporal
John M. King recalled; “The cavalry guarded every little cow path over the
mountains for miles up and down the ridge, and trouble along the picket line
was almost a daily occurrence.The
rebels being well acquainted with every cow path, peak, and hiding place, they
had the advantage.It was nothing
unusual for a rebel with a field glass to mount some high peak and examine our
position thoroughly.Picketing became
more and more dangerous every day.”1Kingdescribed
Nickajack Trace thus: “This little steep, rugged path…wound its way in a
zig-zag course around huge rocks, knolls, and broken cedars, until it reached
an altitude a half a mile up.This path
was so steep that a horse could not climb it…” 2

On the night of
Friday the 22nd, fifty hand-picked men of the Confederate 1st
Kentucky Cavalry Battalion, led by Lieutenant Joseph Vincent of B Company, crept
over Taylor’s Ridge.Where the Old
Alabama Road converged with Nickajack Trace, a rail fence provided something
essential to Vincent’s plan.After
dismounting his troopers, Vincent had them pile the rails chest high into a
horseshoe-shaped breastwork to cover and conceal his men.This construction had the added benefit of
being virtually escape-proof.

A native of Oldham County, Kentucky, the
twenty-seven year-old Vincent stood an imposing six-foot-three.Two of his brothers also served in B Company before their capture in different engagements.Vincent’s part in the upcoming fight was
described in some detail in a letter to a Memphis newspaper, at the time
published in Atlanta.Writing from the
camp of the 1st Kentucky, the author of the letter signed it “Gentillus.”
3Other than naming the commander of the raid,
Gentillus said almost nothing of the other Confederates forming up for the
attack.

Meanwhile,
Scovill’s troopers had settled in.The
night air being chilly in the mountains, where snows had fallen as recently as
early April, the men wore their overcoats. Those not actually up and manning a post
huddled around campfires, sleeping uneasily, their horses tethered lower down
the ridge.One of the videttes, Private Edwin
Elliott, would be the first to sound the alarm, just before 4am.What he saw as he straddled his horse were
the silhouettes of a large body of mounted men ascending the eastern slopes of
the ridge.He could hear the snapping of
twigs as they advanced, as well as the orders quietly spoken by their officers.
In overwhelming force, having achieved
almost complete surprise, the Rebels were coming!

As can be seen from correspondence in the Official Records, this was no random attack. Rather, it was Wheeler’s
answer to a stinging dispatch regarding the Union raid at Spring Place. Gen. William W. Mackall, Johnston’s chief
of staff, had written Wheeler a terse note, strongly implying that he and General Johnston had only learned of this incident from citizens, rather than from Wheeler, who ought to have known about it and reported it. Johnston had already sent Wheeler a note earlier on the morning of the 22nd, asking him to find out if the enemy was fortifying near Ringgold. To comply, Wheeler either needed to send scouts into enemy lines or capture some prisoners to interrogate. Wasting no time, Wheeler turned to
Colonel Reuben R. Ross, a colorful Tennessean and West Pointer, class of
1853.Married and the father of three children, Ross
had won honors for his skillful direction of one of the heavy artillery
batteries that turned back the naval flotilla attacking Fort Donelson in
February 1862.Two years later, Ross was
officially the inspector general of Davidson’s Brigade, Humes’s
Division.He was also its intelligence
officer, having run “scouts” in Middle Tennessee all through 1863, signing
their lodging vouchers in the name of the Confederate Secret Service. 4

Ross chose the
men who would make the assault on Taylor’s Ridge from two regiments of
Tennesseans. General
Davidson’s escort, Company K, 1st Tennessee
Cavalry (Carter’s), was, by a twist of fate, commanded by a Texan and former medical student named
Captain Richard M. Swearingen.5 No other companies of Carter's regiment were stationed at Tunnel Hill (the rest being in East Tennessee), making Swearingen's men its only participants. Ross also selected men from Lieutenant Colonel Paul Anderson’s 4th
Tennessee (also known as the 8th), probably because they had been picketing the Confederate side of the
gap for several weeks.They knew the
terrain better than anyone else, and they had lost men at Spring Place. Finally, Company B, 1st Kentucky Battalion (formerly a regiment now downsized due to losses) would be the anvil against which the Tennesseans would hammer away at Scovill's pickets. A number of lieutenants and captains would have been involved in the coming fight, most of them unnamed, while Lt. Vincent played the most conspicuous part.

Confederate Veteran Magazine

Vincent’s
Kentuckians had recently returned from resting and refitting in Alabama. However, in November 1863, as
a part of Butler’s 1st Kentucky, he and his men had picketed
Nickajack Trace. That assignment would have given them complete familiarity with the terrain. Neither well-educated
nor politically connected, Vincent had worked as a surveyor before the war, another possible reason why he was chosen to carry out the most hazardous part of the mission. Bearing the scars of three separate wounds, he
was a natural leader and a fearless combatant.Once the shooting started, he would play a major role in the brief but
bloody fight.For now, though, his
mission was to lie in wait.

The assault
force ascending Taylor’s Ridge was divided into three battalions.One attacked from the north down the ridge,
another from the east, out of Houston Valley, while a third came up from the
south.Their plan of attack was to converge at the crest of the ridge, forcing the retreating Federals into Vincent’s ambush.Union reports estimated their numbers at perhaps as much as a hundred
men per battalion.Colonel Ross was in
command, most likely riding with Swearingen’s Company, rather than with the battalion
now bearing down on Private Elliott.

Once he spotted
the Confederates, Elliott hurriedly woke the men around their campfire near the
crest, missing John M. King in the confusion.Elliott then decided it was his duty to ride back to his post and stand
his ground. Meanwhile, the sleepy-eyed
troopers began to pull themselves together to meet the assault.Elliott’s stand may have bought them a few
seconds, but his misplaced sense of duty sealed his fate.He was probably the first man captured in the
raid.

Hearing the
ruckus, King roused himself, only to hear something that made his hair stand on
end.A doleful voice cried out in
desperation, “For God’s sake!Don’t
shoot me again! You have shot one of your own men!” 6 Next, a lone
figure approached within yards of his position. King could not be sure if the man was friend
or foe, so he covered him with his Spencer. As King continued to watch him, unable to decide what to do, the dark form propped his weapon against a boulder. Once the lone man again took up his weapon, he pointed it straight at the wary corporal King. The intruder gave the game away when he turned to look over his shoulder. King heard him say, “Lieutenant, these are Yanks down here.” 7King
fired one round.He did not think it was possible
to have missed, and he may well have killed the only Confederate reported to have died
that day.

King had no
time to investigate.Since his little
squad had no chance against the onrushing Confederates, he quickly gave the
order to fall back. (His sergeant was too busy firing his Spencer to make that call.) Eventually, King lost
his rifle, overcoat, and horse in his mad scramble down the ridge in the dark,
falling over a steep crag at one point.Skulking through the cedars, he somehow managed to keep his wits about
him, while everywhere men were running, some falling off their horses, others having their horses fall.It was their
fate to be shot or taken prisoner, while few men anywhere on the ridge were
making a stand.

Lieutenant
Scovill was kept busy doling out the reserves, first to one point of attack,
then to another, until he determined to personally lead the last group in a
desperate attempt to break out.Meeting
up with King’s retreating squad, the lieutenant headed them in the direction of
the Old Alabama Road.It was a tragic
mistake, for no help lay in that direction.A gap in the lines between the 92nd Illinois and 3rd Kentucky
pickets had allowed the Confederates to execute a stunning attack, cutting the
Federals off from each other in the confusion. King’s stealthy Rebel with a field glass had
indeed spotted their weakness.Scovill’s
men, in the words of Gentillus, “ran pell-mell, helter-skelter, right down on
the ambush.” 8At least one man was killed and another
wounded before they realized they were trapped, their horses unable to jump the
barricade.

Once Scovill
and his squad were captured, Vincent's men turned their attention to King and the
others making their way along the base of the ridge.King was one of the lucky ones who managed to
escape, along with an unnamed sergeant who played dead as Vincent’s men nearly rode
over him.With King no longer a witness, we turn to Gentillus for this chilling statement. “Lieut. Vincent killed ten of them dead in the
lane and captured forty-three others.Nearly all of them were wounded in some way, and none went back to tell
the story.” 9Though the numbers are obviously exaggerated, the
words can be read in a far more sinister way than Gentillus may have
intended.The question, simply put, is
what did Vincent do with his prisoners?Thirteen can be accounted for, but there were others—men whose treatment
would soon be described as “murder.”

As the
retreating Confederates made off with their spoil, small bands of Yanks retook
their abandoned positions.The stories
they would hear that morning both appalled and enraged them.About a mile from Vincent’s ambush, Private
William Castenach was found, shot twice, but still alive.He told his friends that a Confederate
lieutenant had shot him after he surrendered.He would later die of his wounds.The body of Private William Hill was found by a woman who told of seeing
him shot in the chest after handing over his weapon. At the ambush site, Private R. J. O’Conner was
also found alive, but mortally wounded. He
would die later that day, but not before telling a story similar to Castenach’s.

Private James
W. Rhodes was shot twice, the second shot hitting him as he was trying to find
a place to lie down.He, too, lived long
enough to give a statement.Adding to
the growing testimony, a local man told of witnessing the murder of a trooper
who had surrendered.Then three of the
men of the 92nd signed a sworn statement saying they witnessed the
death of Castenach, agreeing that he had been shot while in the hands of the
enemy.Both Castenach and O’Conner told
of being shot for not running fast enough to keep up with their mounted
captors, who were hurrying them toward Tunnel Hill. Regimental surgeons wrote that some of the
bodies exhibited powder burns on their skin, and that Hill’s coat had caught
fire from the pistol blast.Their
conclusion: some six or seven men had been deliberately murdered after they
surrendered, two died in the fight, while the other cases were ambiguous.10All witnesses agreed that a Confederate
lieutenant had done the shooting, or in one case, a captain of a Tennessee
regiment.

Of the 64 men
on picket at Nickajack Gap, perhaps thirty were killed, wounded or captured.Lieutenant Scovill and twelve men were
brought back to Tunnel Hill, while ten others died that day.Three more would die by the 25th,
another two within weeks. Private
Elliott and eight others later died at Andersonville.

While Scovill
and his men were on their way to the prison camps, Eli Murray and Benjamin
Sheets compiled their reports, attaching those of the surgeons.Civilized warfare had been abandoned by the Rebels,
they asserted, and the time had come to answer in kind. 11 The reports
were detailed and lengthy.Meanwhile,
someone styling himself “Dr. Adonis” used virtually identical language in a
letter published in a Louisville paper.12

After the
reports reached General George Thomas at Chattanooga, he sent a brief reply. First, he criticized Sheets for not patrolling
aggressively enough.However, he added,
the nature of the ground meant that such surprises were bound to happen.Finally, he promised that the “outrages”
would be “attended to.” 13Yet on April the 27th, he received
a report from Kilpatrick telling of another Confederate raid on Nickajack
Gap.A few horses had been lost, but no
men.Then, on the 29th,
Kilpatrick mounted a reconnaissance through Ringgold Gap, taking with him 1500
cavalry, 300 infantry and section of artillery.The Confederates fell back, allowing their camp at Tunnel Hill to be
shelled.Having barricaded the gaps with
felled trees, they preferred to fight from prepared positions.

Humes reported
losing twenty men, while back at Dalton, W.W. Mackall sent Wheeler a dispatch
ordering him to come up at once.However, since the Confederates would not come out to meet him in the
open, Kilpatrick withdrew. He again came
out on May 2, with similar results.Disappointed, he left Wheeler a note at the home of a civilian—a note
which Mackall described as far more “dignified” than he would have expected of
a man of Kilpatrick’s reputation. 14 However dignified, it was still
a schoolboy’s taunt, daring Wheeler to come out in the open and take his lumps.Somehow, Kilpatrick and all concerned,
including the men of the 92nd, felt that Nickajack Gap had been
avenged, their honor restored. 15 Thomas apparently agreed, for,
other than giving Kilpatrick a vague order to “punish” the Rebels, there is no
record that he ever “attended to” anything. While there are accounts of retaliation at the company or regimental level, no official orders to do so have survived. No doubt Confederate prisoners were summarily executed during at least one of these pushes by Kilpatrick, but the furor over Nickajack Gap had died down by the first week of May. Sherman's army group was preparing to outflank the Confederate position on Rocky Face Ridge, opening the way to Atlanta and causing all interest in what happened on April 23rd to rapidly fade.

Two years after
the war, in October 1867, Horace Scovill, now living at Rockford, Illinois,
responded to an ad run in newspapers throughout the North.The US House of Representatives, said the ad,
was investigating the treatment of Union prisoners while in Rebel hands and
would like to hear their testimony.Scovill
responded with a letter, but was never interviewed.He wrote that his men had been marched about
two miles from where they were captured, where he was pistol-whipped by one
Lieutenant Pointer of General Wheeler’s staff.He added that Pointer had shot most of the five or six men who had been
gunned down after they surrendered.At
Tunnel Hill, he was interrogated by Wheeler for about an hour.He told the general about the shootings, but
Wheeler “feigned it could not be true.”A Colonel King had led the party who had captured his men, Scovill
confidently asserted. 16In one brief paragraph, Scovill pointed the
finger at two individuals, one of whom has had a black mark on his record ever
since.Lieutenant Pointer was accused of
shooting Castenach and O’Conner in all subsequent Union versions of the affair,
including John M. King’s diary and Fox's Regimental Losses,17
both published in the 1880s.

Marcellus
Pointer, of Holly Springs, Mississippi, had just turned twenty-three at the time
of the raid.He had served on Wheeler’s
staff since before the Battle of Perryville, having been wounded at least twice.On December 28, 1863, Pointer had been
briefly captured at Charleston, Tennessee, in a botched raid. 18 One
of Joe Vincent’s brothers had also been captured there. Pointer, however, had managed to shoot one of
his captors, and was simultaneously shot by the other one before breaking out
of the trap. It was the second time Pointer had shot his
way out of a trap, protecting Wheeler both times, making it possible for the
general to escape as well.

Needless to
say, Wheeler was indebted to his young aide. When General W. W. Mackall,
through his aide and nephew, Lt. T.B. Mackall, asked him for a report of the Nickajack incident, Wheeler
proceeded cautiously.On the 27th,
he wrote Lt. Mackall, saying he had investigated the matter and found that none of
his staff officers had acted improperly.This one-paragraph note is the only official Confederate report that has
survived.Wheeler alluded to one that
Mackall was supposedly preparing for Col. Edwin Harvie, Johnston's inspector general, saying he had not received it yet, and asking
the names of those involved.“Exaggerated
and false reports concerning this matter…should be corrected without delay,”
Wheeler concluded. 19

Gen. W.W. Mackall

Lt. Mackall’s
report has yet to be found.All other
Confederate references to the Nickajack fight are found in less than half a
dozen newspaper accounts, one mention of it in Joe Vincent’s bio, published in
1899 20 , and a brief reference published in Nashville in 1878.21The most detailed account is the letter Gentillus
wrote the day of the raid.As previously quoted, he claimed that Vincent
had shot ten Yankees dead, and that none of his wounded prisoners “went back to
tell the story.”

Thus we have
precious little from the Confederate side, none of which plainly tells of any
prisoners being murdered. The letter signed by Gentillus, written on the day of the raid, comes closest to giving a clear description of possible atrocities. While he commends Lt. Vincent for a brilliant affair, he at the same time inadvertently raises the question of whether Vincent executed any of his wounded prisoners. On the other hand, all the subsequent allegations against Marcellus Pointer can be traced to Horace Scovill’s
un-vetted written statement made in 1867, three and a half years after the
fact.In naming Pointer, John M. King
obviously relied on Scovill’s account.

King, however, inconsistently accuses Pointer of riding back from his detail in order to shoot Castenach, then of wandering over the field and executing other wounded men where they fell. King did not seem to comprehend how foolish such an action would have been, given that the fight was over and any Confederate caught under such circumstances could have been executed on the spot. As it was, Private Bellows of Swearingen's company was quickly spirited away before any of the irate troopers of the 92nd could do him any harm.

Several sources hint at retaliation for the Nickajack incident, one even mentioning that the 10th Ohio Cavalry executed some prisoners at an out-building on April 29th during Kilpatrick's first reconnaissance foray out of Ringgold Gap. This incident seems highly unlikely, but one regimental history of the 92nd Illinois says they gave the battle cry "Remember Nickajack!" that day but never after. John M. King explicitly states, "We took no prisoner that day as the men were determined to avenge Nickojack [sic]." 22

Captain Richard M. Swearingen
Handbook of Texas Online

As to the allegations of Confederate murders, Lt. Scovill's letter remains the strongest evidence against Lt. Pointer. No other members of the 92nd wrote to the House investigators, nor were they interviewed. Scovill himself could easily have traveled to St. Louis to be interviewed, but there is no record that he ever did. Unfortunately, the events as he lays them out are not entirely clear and lack corroboration. Still, we can
test Scovill’s recollection that a Colonel King led the party that captured
him.Two colonels named King served in
Wheeler’s Corps at the time of the raid.One was being held in a Northern prison camp, 23while the other had been put out of action by
a serious wound in February 1864.24 There was a Col. King at Nickjack Gap, but he was second in command of the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry, a Union regiment. Furthermore,
Scovill eventually told reporters in Rockford a different story. Failing to mention any murders, he said the “brutal
officer” who captured him relieved him of his boots and overcoat. 25 When
Marcellus Pointer was shot through the body at Charleston, four months before
Nickajack, he was wearing an overcoat, which the bullet penetrated.Every account of that incident contains this
detail.His wound disabled him, and, as of January 31st,
1864, he was on leave, according to his compiled service records.Whatever his clothing deficiencies, they could
easily have been supplied by his father, a prosperous Mississippi cotton
planter. If Pointer had no need of an overcoat, it is highly unlikely that he would take Scovill's. At any rate, Scovill seemed to be accusing his original captor of this, not the officer in charge of the detail moving him and his men to Tunnel Hill.

In July 1909, long after the war, Scovill read Pointer’s obituary, commenting that he wasn't sorry to hear he was dead. As might be expected, he spoke harshly of Pointer, all but
calling him a war criminal.Yet Scovill
again failed to repeat the allegation that Pointer had shot any prisoners the
day of the raid. 26Had it all been a case of mistaken
identity? As mentioned, Vincent stood six-foot-three, whereas, at five-eleven, Pointer was four inches shorter. In Vincent's defense, one would think witnesses would notice the height of an officer as tall as Vincent and include that in their testimony, but physical descriptions are absent from all known accounts. Based on this lack of descriptive detail, the evidence against Pointer is based solely on Scovill's 1867 letter naming him. Scovill had received a blow on the head, then been a prisoner for a year, only writing two and a half years after the end of the war. Thus the letter written by Gentillus on the day of the raid, along with Wheeler's letter to Lt. Mackall, written three days later, should be given more weight. It should also be reiterated that John M. King did not personally witness any part of the fight other than the opening assault on his position. Whatever he wrote about Lt. Pointer, he got second hand. There is certainly enough evidence from Union reports in the Official Records to say some of the captured men were shot while in Confederate hands by a lieutenant and possibly a captain. However, after a century and a half, we
may never know whether these men were murdered or shot while putting up resistance. We certainly do not have enough evidence to positively identify their killer (or killers). What is missing is clear evidence that Lt. Vincent transferred thirteen live prisoners over to Lt. Pointer's sole custody. While General Wheeler is on record as saying
none of his staff officers acted improperly that day, his report cannot entirely be relied on for any vindication of his staff. It was too brief, named no names and quoted no testimony.

In the final analysis, more than one Confederate officer may possibly be implicated. However, Captain Swearingen's post-war record casts him in a favorable light. As a doctor, he volunteered in 1878 to go to Holly Springs, Mississippi, to tend the victims of yellow fever. Thus, he doesn't seem the type to execute prisoners. Other lieutenants and captains certainly took part in the raid, though we do not know their names. What can absolutely be established from the facts is that the Confederates took at least thirteen prisoners. In addition, Vincent was alleged to have killed ten men, the number generally reported dead in the actual fight. No surviving document or account establishes transfer of custody of any prisoners from Vincent to Pointer. What does seem clear is that all of the killings except one took place at or near Vincent's ambush, rather than en route to Tunnel Hill. Whether Vincent fired the fatal shots or not, the ultimate responsibility for the incident lies with the commander of the raid, Col. Reuben R. Ross. He certainly should have filed a report, but whatever Ross may have written or said about Nickajack Gap is lost to history. He left nothing in writing that has surfaced; and he died near the end of the war, resisting capture, in what must be the height of irony, refusing to surrender.

Drawing of Gen. Wheeler
from the Nov 14, 1863,
Issue of Frank Leslie's Illustrated The clipping was folded as if to fit in an envelope and was probably sent home by Marcellus Pointer shortly after a fight with the 11th Ky Cav (US) on that date near Maryville, Tenn.

End
Notes

1.King, John M., and Claire E.
Swedberg. Three years with the 92nd Illinois the Civil War diary of John M.
King, p192

Evening ed.: 2. He was not one of the three regular correspondents of the paper, whose real names we know. Those three were each imbedded with a Confederate army in the field. The only clue to his identity is that, in corrupt Latin, he styles himself "a gentile," possibly meaning he has anti-semitic beliefs.

4.Compiled Service Records,
Col. Reuben R. Ross, pp35-36

5.Compiled Service Records,
Pvt. James Bellows (Bellers), the only Confederate captured in the raid. He belonged to Swearingen’s Company.

6.King, 194

7.Ibid, 194

8.Gentillus

9.Ibid

10.Official Records of the War
of the Rebellion, Series I, V 32 (part 1) pp684-685. One of the seven men
listed as murdered actually survived the war.

24.Dodson, Appendix, p371. Col.
Hugh M. King, of Wheeler’s staff, was wounded in the hip on Feb. 26, 1864. On
April 24, he wrote a letter to the War Department in Richmond, protesting the
dropping of his name from the rolls. (Compiled Service Records)

25.Horace Curtis Scovill (1833
- 1912) - Find A Grave Memorial, Transcribed Obituary. Private William
Reynolds, also mortally wounded, had told of having his boots forcibly taken,
as did R. J. O’Conner, in statements summarized in the Official Records.

Official Records of the War of the Rebellion,
“Cornell University Library Making of America Collection." Cornell Library
Windows on the Past. United States , n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2012..

Report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War
by the Rebel Authorities During the War of the Rebellion "A Century of
Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 -
1875." American Memory from the Library of Congress - Home Page.
Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2012.
.Link # 1391

Sisler, George, "The
Arrest of a Memphis Daily Appeal War Correspondent on Charges

Post Script:One
of the most troubling aspects of doing the research for this piece is
the lack of Confederate documentation. There is a pattern running
through this that makes this writer extremely suspicious. Lt. Joseph E.
Vincent's record card for March-April 1864 is missing, while everything
else in his compiled service records is there. Many of Marcellus
Pointer's records are missing as well. The Mackall report, referred to
by Wheeler, is missing. No official reports of any Confederate officer
involved, neither Col. Ross, Col. Anderson, nor General Davidson are in
the Official Records. Wheeler left off all mention of the incident in his 1878 reply to Dr. E.L. Drake, who was publishing the Annals of the Army of Tennessee
in Nashville. Wheeler's tables, with lists of actions his command
fought, are otherwise quite detailed. Lt. T.B. Mackall's diary has been
published online, but it begins on May 5, 1864. The list goes on and on,
but one very unusual gap in the records seems more than suspicious.
W.W. Mackall's gossipy letters to his wife, generally written on a daily
basis, are entirely missing from March 22, 1864, until April 27, four
days after the raid. At that point, Mackall describes riding sixteen
miles over the mountains to confer with Hardee, and significantly,
Davidson, who was Col. Ross's commanding officer. Mackall quotes the
scripture, tells of praying for his family and confides that he was
uneasy and had spent a sleepless night. What could have been troubling
him so much? If any documents or reports were destroyed, W.W. Mackall
was ideally placed in every case. That Wheeler's brief note survived at
all is because it was in his own order book.

In addition,
there are some striking things in the service records of Col. Ross.
While on parole at his home in Clarksville after the surrender of Fort
Donelson, he wrote to Federal authorities asking them to expedite his
exchange, not for any zeal for the cause, he claimed. No, he was certain
that he might be of service in giving aid to Federal prisoners in Confederate hands. This
strangely presages later remarks made in his records after he became a
prisoner for the second time. On September 5, 1864, Ross was captured
near Pulaski, Tennessee, during Wheeler's post-Atlanta raid into Middle
Tennessee. Two of his cards state that Ross was a very humaneofficer whohad often rendered valuable assistance to Federal prisoners of war.
The implications are profound, given that he commanded the Nickajack
raid. Was someone on the Union side attempting to help defend Ross
against charges of murder at Nickajack Gap?

Ross escaped
while en route to Johnson's Island by jumping off a moving train, only
to be killed resisting capture in December 1864 at Hopkinsville,
Kentucky. Given what he knew, and how he might be implicated, he may
have preferred to go down fighting rather than face execution. His bio
says he refused to surrender in a hand-to-hand combat during Lyon's raid
into Kentucky. (This forlorn hope was ordered by John Bell Hood as a
screen for his Tennessee Campaign, leading ultimately to the the Battle
of Nashville.) Ross, if anyone, should the full responsibility for Nickajack Gap, and he should have been in a position to know the facts. All that being said, the essay appearing here comes closer than any other account to uncovering what actually happened that morning in April 1864.

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Disclaimer

There is no political agenda behind this blog. That follows from our belief that there is no such thing as objective truth in politics. Our sole purpose is family heritage, something we would like to preserve, given that human memory is so fragile. God bless the United States of America.

Emory Daniel

"So blind that he had to be led by a boy to my office. Talk about indigent circumstances!! He is in rags!! And almost on starvation while he gropes his way in darkness." T.J. Bradford

Bradford's client, Emory Daniel, of White County, Tennessee, was wounded at Raleigh, North Carolina, by a minnie ball that hit his left hip joint. He was also wounded at Resaca, Georgia, had lost the use of his right eye and could barely walk due to rheumatism. He got his pension, having been with Joe Johnston's army at the surrender.